Turning job frustrations into career fulfillment
This is one of my favorite stories: Two shoe salespeople are sent to a new country to sell the company’s latest brand of shoe. After arriving at their destination, they both call back to head-office with the same message. In this country, no one wears shoes. At all. Not a single person. The first one calls back and says: “Hey Boss, I’m coming back. No one in this country wears shoes. We won’t sell anything here. This trip was a waste of time.” The other one calls back and says: “Ramp up production! Send more sales people! We’re going to make a killing here! No one here has any shoes!” Same situation, different mindset, different perspective, potentially a completely different outcome. The first salesperson played the victim card, chose to take further negative action (giving up) and got a definite negative outcome (no sales and no income). The second one chose to look at the potential upside, chose a positive action (continued pushing forward) and at least realized the potential of making the sales commission of her life.
Nothing … and I mean NOTHING is more important and determines success in career (and life) more than mindset. Get your mindset right and things start to fall into place. Don’t, and you will be stuck in first gear, on a slow painful crawl to career burnout.
Mindset is a broad topic. Mountains of books have been written on the subject. For today, let’s talk about three different mindset traps and two practical solutions to overcoming each one.
These mindset traps are:
1. Growth mindset vs. Fixed mindset
In her book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, (which I highly recommend) Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck speaks about the difference between fixed mindset people and growth mindset people. Fixed mindset people believe that their intelligence, skills, aptitude, and capabilities are fixed and essentially set by nature. You’re either smart, talented or capable or you’re not. And if you’re smart or talented, you really don’t even need to work at it, it just comes naturally. And if you fail, it’s not your fault … because you’re smart, talented or capable; which makes it something or someone else’s fault.
Growth mindset people, on the other hand, believe that skills, intelligence or talent is obtainable through learning, practice and hard work. They work hard to become successful and when they fail, they assume they just didn’t work hard enough or smart enough and they formulate a plan to do better next time.
The distinction between these two mindsets makes all the difference in how you approach your career and life and will make all the difference in the outcome.
Two ways to develop a growth mindset:
2. The “I’m right, you’re wrong” mindset: Teachable Spirit
The second mindset type is what I call “Teachable Spirit”. Having a teachable spirit means simply that you have an open mind and you are open to learning. Before you roll your eyes and say. “Of course I’m open to learning!” I mean, who exactly is going to say: “Nope, I’m not interested in learning. I already know all there is to know on the subject. In fact, I already know all there is to know about everything!” Yes, we would not think very highly of someone who makes a statement like that. However, unfortunately, even though we’d never say something that narrow-minded, as humans we have a tendency to act in that exact way. We tend to dismiss or at least resist opinions that are different from ours without opening our minds and actively considering the possibility that we may be wrong in our assumptions, opinions or beliefs. Our natural instinct when we hear information that differs from our own is to immediately start building the case in our minds for why we are right and the other party is wrong, and in doing so, we shut down the possibility of seeing situations from a different viewpoint and potentially learning something new.
Two ways to develop a Teachable Spirit:
3. Status Quo mindset
The final, much more subtle type of mindset is what I’ll call the “status quo” bias. This isn’t as much of a deficiency as it is simply the lack of desire for experimenting, learning, and growth. It is the tendency to keep the status quo, stay in the same rut, live the same life, drive the same way to work every day, talk to the same people, follow the same routine and just be completely satisfied for things never to change. This preference to stay inside our comfort zone is almost as dangerous as our desire to stay entrenched in our own opinions. As Einstein said: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expect a different result”. Especially if you don’t like the result you are currently getting, the only way to change the trajectory of your life is to do something different; to learn something new. To take a new fork in the road. If you’re not convinced, just think about what happens to companies who remain in the status quo; who don’t change, who don’t innovate. They most certainly go the way of the Dodo. Extinct. As humans, we are no different. If you are not changing by growing, you are most certainly changing by dying. In relation to the rest of the world, you are becoming obsolete.
Two ways to break the Status Quo:
Now that we’ve covered three mindset traps and solutions; I have a test for you. You’ve read this article. You either have new information or a refresher on the information you already knew. What are you changing as a result? What are you going to do differently? Do you have a list? Do you have a plan? Or are you thinking: “That’s nice, but nothing I haven’t heard before. What’s for dinner?” And there you have it: Fixed, Non-Learning and Status Quo mindset demonstrated in one simple little test. How did you do?
© 2017 Heinrich Stander ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
I know I have The “I’m right, you’re wrong” mindset. Can you please give me some more tips to become person with Teachable spirit
Thanks
Hi Chintan
Firstly, congratulations on being very self aware of your mindset and willing to change. That shows great emotional intelligence. That’s the first step in improving. Great job, you overcame the first hurdle!
Secondly, one of the roots of a closed mindset is pride and arrogance. We tend to be too proud or arrogant to consider that our viewpoint is not the only one worth considering. I would recommend doing some soul searching to see if this is true for you. Remember, the more honest you are with yourself, the more likely you are to find your triggers and start the change process. If this IS true for you, work on being more humble with others. Humility allows you to respect and value others’ opinions more and therefore is the antidote to pride, arrogance and self righteousnous.
Thirdly, practice empathic listening. That is listening with the intent to understand the other person rather than listening with the intent to defend your position or just waiting until they are done speaking so you can make or reinforce your point. Steven Covey in his book The 7 Habits of Highly effective people, calls it “Seek first to understand, then to be understood”. If you truly listen with the intent to understand and with the intent to learn, over time, you will definitely grow in being more open-minded.
Remember that these things all take practice and time. Your mindset didn’t develop overnight and you won’t change it overnight. It takes work and practice. But in the end, it is totally worth it. However, I want to commend you again for recognizing that you need to change and for reaching out to get coaching to change.
I am currently writing a book called Rocket Fuel for Careers, in which I go into much more depth on all these types of topics. If you’re interested, I can add you to my list and I can notify you once it’s completed and published.
All the best
Heinrich